Fla. Dems reveal opponent's SSN

The Florida Democratic Party has offered to pay to protect Republican congressional candidate Allen West from identity theft because it sent out a mailer featuring his Social Security number.

West, a retired Army colonel and YouTube sensation running against Rep. Ron Klein, was hit with a tax lien — since paid — in 2005, and the state party attacked him for it and other financial problems in a mailer sent out to 22nd District voters over the weekend.

Story Continued Below

The piece featured a photo of an IRS document showing the tax lien — and while West’s address was blacked out, his Social Security number and his wife’s Employment Identification Number were clearly visible.

“Ron Klein has clearly crossed a line. I'm not yet sure the potential damage that might come to my wife and me, and it makes me sick to think of what could happen to my daughters. My entire family is at risk of identity theft,” West said in a statement about the mailer.

The state Democratic Party called West’s claims about his children “bizarre” and called his concern about the mailer “another moment of West's paranoia.”

Still, it agreed to pay for identity theft monitoring for two years, and party officials apologized — sort of.

“After making every effort to remove all of Allen West’s private information, unlike West who refuses to apologize to Florida’s taxpayers for not paying his taxes and his bills, we apologize for the oversight of not redacting this information from the public record included in the mailer,” the party said in a released statement.

West has not said whether he will accept the party’s offer.

Klein ran against West in 2008 and beat him by 10 points. But this year, West has an endorsement from former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and produced a sensational viral YouTube video aimed at rallying conservatives.

He’s relied on that popularity to raise more than $1.4 million in the past quarter alone, raking in a total of $3.5 million so far this cycle.

Klein had a $2.9 million cash stockpile at the end of the second quarter, but he raised just over $509,000 during that period — just 36 percent of West’s haul.

It’s a problem President Barack Obama is set to help solve: On Oct. 11, he’ll host a fundraiser for Klein at basketball star Alonzo Mourning’s Coral Gables home.